Jumbled Story
by uncontained hybrid
Summary: Remus, no matter what he tries, can't leave Sirius behind.


The hallways of the apartment, which had once been filled with light, seemed now to harbour all the darkness and dust in the world. Remus traced patterns in the dust with his index finger, and sighed. He couldn't keep on living in this apartment anymore – not without Sirius. But he had no money to pay for another apartment, and James had left this for him, and he couldn't let that part of James die.

Remus took a deep breath. He needed to keep going, for some reason known to no one, including Remus himself. One foot in front of the other, he reminded himself. But it was hard, because whereever Remus looked, there was another reminder of the people he had lost, staring at him in the face.

Remus heaved a sigh, and turned around, crawling back into the bed he had shared with Sirius a mere three months ago and the memories coming at him were like a slap in the face.

He closed his eyes, and desperately tried to fall asleep, his fists clenching at the matress like a toddler.

Through his closed eyes, all Remus could see were the four Marauders, traipsing around the Hogwarts grounds, laughing happily, barely a care in the world.

He rolled over, remembering what it had been like to leave Hogwarts and enter the real world. They had known, of course, what was going on, but their main source of knowledge had been the Ministry-controlled Daily Prophet, resulting in their perception of the outside world to be somewhat jumbled.

Remus opened his eyes, and got up. There was no way he could sleep like this. Not alone, not with the nightmares, and not without Sirius.

He pulled on a coat over his pyjamas, and slipped on his rather scuffed boots. He opened the door and slipped out into the cold air of the London night, shoving his hands into his pockets.

On he walked, thinking of the friends he had lost – three to a place where he would one day meet them again, and one to a place where he could never breach the gap that stretched between them.

"The only friend I've got left in the land of the living, and he's too far gone for me to try and understand why," Remus kicked the frozen groud, too tired and emotionally overwhelmed to be angry anymore.

He missed Sirius. He missed the feel of Sirius' body against his own, he missed the shaggy black dog that nursed the creature inside of himself. He hated to admit that he could forgive Sirius somewhat, if only Sirius could come back to him. Remus hurried on through the streets, as if walking faster would help him to get away from the pain of days gone by.

Realising maybe there was a spark of the wolf intertwined with himself, he came to sudden halt. He stopped on a gravel path, and bent down to pick up some of the small stones. He threw them one by one, the tears streaming down his face. He threw them, aiming at nothing in particular, but imagined them hitting Sirius square in the face. Eventually, Remus ran out of strength, and sank to the floor, gasping.

He knelt there for several long minutes, before slowly getting up, and plodding his way back to the apartment he could no longer bring himself to refer to as home.

He let himself in, and pulled off his coat. He dragged himself to his bed, and lay down, the muscles in his body shaking and trembling, with a fear that could never be healed. Somehow, he eventually fell asleep, tears staining his bedsheets.

He woke up, the pillow that had once been Sirius' staring him in the face. Unable to bear the sight of it so clean and unused, he vanished it with a tap from his wand. He slid out of bed and walked out of the apartment, not knowing where in Merlin's name he would end up, but it needed to be far from the apartment turned mausoleum. All he needed was to take it one step at a time, and right now all he needed was to shake the feeling of exhaustion – nothing a coffee couldn't fix.

His feelings were jumbled, like the text of the story of his life had been torn to bits and dropped in water. He couldn't begin to repair it, to put the pieces back together, but he could move on a little bit. He could keep on writing his story for now, as long as he never had to revisit the old text, the damaged text, ever again.

* * *

A/N: Written for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition. (Beater 1, Bellybats). Prompts used: 5. Bring Me Down - Miranda Lambert, 9. creature, and 11. jumbled.


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